


there will be feasting and dancing

by asael



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Christmas, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 12:01:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5539226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asael/pseuds/asael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam's first Christmas alone. Ronan's second. Gansey worries, because he's Gansey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there will be feasting and dancing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notraelet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notraelet/gifts).



> This is Rae's fault. It's not even Christmas anymore.
> 
> Title from the Mountain Goats' 'This Year'.

“Jesus fuck, Gansey, leave him alone.”

Gansey lowers his phone, thumb still hovering over the call button, Adam’s number glowing on the screen. He looks at Ronan with injured dignity and no little confusion, and Ronan shifts, frustrated, because there is no possible way to make him understand. Not really. Not when he has awkward holiday dinners with distant relatives, parents who’ll ask him about school, little annoyances and uncomfortable moments but love.

Not when he can say things like: “But he can’t be all by himself. It’s _Christmas_ ,” and mean it.

There’s too much to explain, and Ronan doesn’t give even one tenth of a shit about trying. He mostly just doesn’t want to listen to Gansey trying to talk Adam into coming with him to his family’s Christmas for the fifth time. The first four times were entertaining only because Ronan timed the length of each conversation and managed to guess, judging by the tone of Gansey’s voice, exactly when Adam was losing his temper and about to end the call.

But then he thought for a moment about Adam on the other end, the way his voice tightens and his shoulders tense when he fights with Gansey, the careful way he carries himself when his pride has been stung, and it lost a bit of its entertainment value.

“It’s December 23rd,” Ronan says, and then, as if it doesn’t matter, “if you’re that worried, I’ll make sure he doesn’t cry himself to sleep every night or whatever.”

Gansey pauses for a moment, looks at him, clearly teetering on the edge of giving in. He’s just as tired of arguing with Adam, it’s clear from the weariness around his eyes. “But-”

“It’s not like I’m going with you. I’ve got time,” Ronan says, with something resembling a smirk, or maybe just a baring of teeth.

There is a brief moment of silence as they both remember the disastrous previous Christmas, the first Christmas after Niall died, when Gansey insisted that Ronan accompany him home so he wouldn’t be alone. No. Ronan will not be attending the Gansey holiday party this year, or likely any other year ever again.

Ronan thinks there’s a lesson Gansey should have learned then, but if he learned it he wouldn’t be pestering Adam about the same thing. Although Ronan does admit, silently, that Adam is significantly less likely than him to end up in a fistfight with a distant Gansey uncle after breaking into the liquor cabinet. For example.

Gansey’s shoulders slump, and he sighs, and Ronan can’t quite decide whether he sounds defeated or relieved. “Very well. But only because I’ve really got to leave in the next hour if I’m to arrive on time.”

Ronan can practically imagine the course of Gansey’s thoughts. Ronan will, at the very least, make sure Adam doesn’t hang himself from the rafters of the church, and Adam will probably not let Ronan talk him into doing anything else spectacularly stupid, and anyway he’ll only be gone for a few days, everything will be fine, and this’ll avert another fight with Adam, and blah blah blah holiday spirit the magic of Christmas, whatever, all Ronan cares about is Gansey leaving it alone.

Because he doesn’t understand. He can’t. And Ronan - maybe doesn’t either, because they aren’t the same. But he understands some things. 

***

Gansey hasn’t called again, and Adam is grateful for that. Things are steadier between them, these days, but Adam is on edge and he’s unable to talk himself out of seeing the invitations as pity. Because he’s alone, because he has no family anymore. Because he should be enfolded in Christmas cheer, welcomed and loved.

It’s so Gansey, kind and giving and ultimately so deeply misguided. 

Adam has been on edge for weeks. He could have told Gansey why, even and logical, facts and figures. _Gansey, were you aware that statistics show that incidents of domestic violence rise during the holidays? Gansey, the holidays don’t mean togetherness and love to me. Gansey, for the love of god, leave me alone._ But there are things that Adam can’t say, that he still never wants to talk about. Even so, he’d been on the edge of it, if Gansey called again.

But he hasn’t. He’d gone home instead, and Adam had gone to bed, and now it’s Christmas Eve and Adam is being reminded that he lives over a church and that some people see Christmas as an all-church-all-the-time holiday. It isn’t loud, exactly, but it is busy, people coming and going, cars pulling in and out.

Which means he doesn’t initially notice the footsteps on the stairs, not until Ronan is pounding on his door. And it is Ronan, Adam knows before he opens it, because he knows that knock, careless and a little too hard.

“What are you doing here?” Adam says, and if were anyone else he might wince at his own rudeness, but it’s Ronan Lynch, the physical embodiment of rudeness, so he doesn’t.

“Making sure I can tell Gansey you’re not dead in a ditch somewhere,” Ronan says, holding the door open for Chainsaw to flutter in behind him and then swinging it closed, taking up space, paradoxically making the tiny apartment feel bigger because he’s in it.

Adam feels his anger build, crawling under his skin and balling in his gut, and that’s all right. Because this is Ronan, and he can fight with Ronan. Ronan is the best person to fight with, in fact. Ronan is the proof of Gansey’s pity, Ronan is here to _check up on him_ , like Adam is a charity case, like he needs to be looked after.

“I didn’t invite you in. Get out, Lynch.” He doesn’t bother to even out his voice, letting it be sharp, letting himself be unfriendly.

Ronan shrugs, unconcerned.

Ronan does not want to fight. How very like him, just when Adam wants to fight more than anything else. It’s infuriating and frustrating, and somehow it manages to cut Adam’s anger off at the knees anyway. He turns away with a frustrated sigh, hand passing over his eyes, rubbing at his forehead and then his hair, suddenly weary. He wants to lay down and sleep until Christmas is over.

“I’m fine. Tell him I’m fine.”

“Sure,” Ronan says, easily. He settles in Adam’s chair, the uncomfortable one in front of the tiny desk, and Chainsaw alights on the corner of the desk, beak tapping at Adam’s eraser. “I’ve got mass later, so I’m just gonna hang out.”

That sparks the anger anew, and Adam turns back to fix him with a venomous look. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

If anything, Ronan seems pleased. God, he’s annoying. “Sure you do. Baby’s first Christmas away from home. Gotta make sure you don’t drown yourself in the bathtub.”

Adam is ready to throw him out, ready to explode, ready to hit something. His fury is all-consuming, that Gansey would think he’s that weak, that _Ronan_ would. He sees red and then, suddenly, he doesn’t.

Ronan’s biting at his leather bands, and Adam sees the scars - he’s seen them a million times - and with a sickening lurch he’s not thinking about himself anymore, he’s not thinking about the way he’s spent the last three weeks tensing every time someone touched him, flinching at shadows. He’s thinking about the year before, when those scars were fresh, when Gansey and Ronan came back from Gansey’s family home and Gansey was furious but trying to pretend he wasn’t. When Ronan was raw and veering unstoppably toward self-destruction.

Not unstoppably. Here he is.

Adam’s shoulders loosen, and he sinks down to sit on the edge of his bed.

“I know you probably have a Christmas Eve fistfight tradition at this point, but this is a church, Lynch. Control yourself.”

There’s less venom in his voice, the anger seeping away, because Ronan is an asshole and Ronan does everything in the worst way possible, but here they both are. Alone.

“That’s what Declan’s for anyway,” Ronan says, and grins, sharp as a knife. “Wouldn’t be Christmas without a few bruises.” Then his grins slips, just for an instant, and he looks at Adam for a flicker of a moment, and Adam feels like an open wound.

He takes the moment and lets it go.

“Coffee?” he says, and it’s a quiet invitation to stay, a dismissal of the fact that moments ago he was ready to throw Ronan out. It’s a few hours until the service starts, he’s pretty sure, and if Ronan’s going to stay here until then he might as well make the most of it. “You can help me conjugate these verbs.”

“Fucking homework on Christmas, Parrish? You really get into the spirit.” Ronan mocks, but his grin is back, his casual ease, the way his presence always asserts itself. It’s impossible for Adam to ever forget that Ronan is there, to ever think for a moment he’s alone.

He wonders how much Ronan understands. He wonders how much of a joke _unknowable_ is these days. He wonders if Ronan knows how much Adam hates the holidays, how much his father’s anger filled the room when things were supposed to be love and forgiveness and light. How much he still misses it, like a hole in the middle of him, the cheap nothing presents that were still held over him because _look how much we give you_ , the brief moments when his mother would brush his hair out of his eyes, when his father’s rage was spent or when he was too drunk to be angry. It wasn’t anything, it was miserable, but it was home, and it’s gone now.

What Ronan lost was better, a million times better, but even so, he lost it. And now they’re both here in Adam’s shabby apartment, and this is what they have.

He starts the coffeemaker, finds a handful of cereal to give to Chainsaw. He leans over Ronan to spill it on the desk, and lets his hand rest on Ronan’s shoulder for a brief moment afterward, before he’s turning away to get his Latin textbook. Ronan is warm, and he lets Adam touch him, he doesn’t tense or shrug him off or bite. So that’s all right.

“My apartment, my rules. We’re doing Latin until I get this or until your mass starts.”

Ronan snipes and grumbles, and Adam knows they probably won’t actually be doing Latin long at all, but it doesn’t really matter. This is what they have, and maybe it is his first Christmas away from home but it’s Ronan’s second and they’re both alone, and Adam doesn’t have anything to flinch from. Just Ronan and Chainsaw, a small apartment that’s a little less lonely, and an endless list of Latin verbs.


End file.
